Wanja Muguongo

Wanja Muguongo

Wanja Muguongo is challenging oppression and phobia through the empowerment of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and intersex people.

She is the Founder and Executive Director of UHAI EASHRI, an organization that addresses the structural and systemic discrimination and marginalization that people of non-conforming sexual orientation, sexual expression, and gender identity continue to face in Africa. UHAI EASHRI is the first African activist-managed and led fund; the lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and intersex (LGBTI) people and sex worker activists themselves make decisions on who gets funded and to what amount. The organization works in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, and Burundi, and its programs, convening role, and institutional strategic thinking and planning are done in consultation with the LGBTI and sex workers communities in each country.

A feminist and social justice activist, Ms. Muguongo has spent her entire professional career working in human rights activism, mostly within the East African civil society sector but also branching out to work in India and Pakistan. Before founding UHAI EASSHRI, she worked at the Ufadhili Trust on its East African program on Community Resource Mobilization and Volunteering. Ms. Muguongo has a master’s degree in sociology, and is fluent in English, Kiswahili, and Kikuyu. She has edited and collaborated on many publications and papers, is a Synergos Senior Fellows, and is a Yale World Fellow 2012.